Thomas John Pope (born 27 August 1985) is an English semi-professional footballer who plays as a centre forward for Northern Premier League Division One West club Kidsgrove Athletic where he holds the role of joint player-manager.

[7] He scored fifteen goals in his first season with Biddulph, and added a further twelve to his tally before returning to Crewe as a professional in October 2005 — manager Dario Gradi now convinced of Pope's potential.

[20] In all he scored 17 goals in 64 games for the Crewe, and he remained thankful to the club, the fans and former manager Dario Gradi for rescuing his career, despite his falling out with then-manager Guðjón Þórðarson.

[4] Impressing in the pre-season games, his first two goals for Rotherham came in a League Cup Second Round tie with West Bromwich Albion at The Hawthorns on 26 August.

[24] However, manager Mark Robins departed in September,[25] and in his absence Pope went on to score only three league goals in 35 appearances in 2009–10, and did not feature in the "Millers"' defeat in the play-off final due to a metatarsal injury.

[27] Jim Gannon found top-scorer Marc Richards out injured,[28] and so Pope finally achieved his dream of playing for the club he supported all his life,[29] when he joined Port Vale on a month-long loan starting on 28 January 2011.

[32] He scored both of the club's goals in his fourth game, a 2–1 win over Bradford City at Vale Park, which was broadcast live on Sky Sports.

[33] This final man-of-the-match winning performance was enough to convince Gannon to 'fight tooth and nail' to keep Pope at the club beyond the initial month long spell.

[37] However, the loan spell was terminated three weeks early following a change of circumstances – parent club Rotherham had dropped out of the play-offs and manager Ronnie Moore had departed.

[38] Pope remained hopeful of a permanent switch in the summer,[39] and a move away from the Don Valley Stadium seemed inevitable after new manager Andy Scott omitted him from United's pre-season tour of Portugal.

He scored twice in his opening ten games, including a headed winning goal against Bradford City, which took the Vale into the automatic promotion places in mid-September; however, after the match he was still forced to respond to criticism levelled at him from a minority of fans.

[47] He agreed to sign a new one-year deal with the club in June 2012,[48] though assistant manager Mark Grew warned him to improve his scoring tally.

[54] It also made him the fastest Vale player to reach double figures since Tom Nolan hit ten goals within the first XI games of the 1933–34 season.

[54] Pope was quick to credit wing duo Jennison Myrie-Williams and Ashley Vincent for supplying him with the chances he needed to find the net so frequently.

[56] Fans at Vale Park began to chant "Feed the Pope and he will score" throughout matches,[57] and he picked up the nickname of the "Sneyd Green Sniper / Assassin", in reference to his hometown.

[58] A hat-trick in a 4–0 win over Bristol Rovers on 20 November meant that he became the quickest player to reach 20 goals (from the start of the season) in the club's Football League history.

[67] He continued to hold down a first-team starting place, and on 6 December he scored his fiftieth goal for Port Vale during a 4–1 FA Cup win over Salisbury City.

[71] After Rob Page took over as caretaker manager in September, Pope said that he was happy to act as a "battering ram" to help create chances for new signing Jordan Slew.

[72] The following month Pope was named as a transfer target by Barnsley manager Danny Wilson, and an unnamed Championship club also had a formal approach to Port Vale turned down.

[76] Pope entered formal talks with Doncaster Rovers in May 2015,[77] before signing a three-year contract with newly promoted League One club Bury.

[84] The team improved after new manager Lee Clark installed a new 5–2–3 formation, and Pope scored seven goals in 40 games as Bury rose clear of the relegation zone at the end of the 2016–17 season.

[94] Speaking at the end of February, Aspin said Pope had been playing through a hernia injury since Christmas and would require an operation to return to anything approaching full fitness.

[108] In the following round he scored his 109th Port Vale goal, making him the outright second-highest goalscorer in the club's history (behind Wilf Kirkham), in a 4–1 defeat to Premier League champions Manchester City on 4 January.

[112] On 5 January, he tweeted a World War III prediction that "We invade Iran then Cuba then North Korea then the Rothchilds are crowned champions of every bank on the planet"; the FA concluded that these remarks amounted to Antisemitic canard and handed him a £3,500 fine and a six-game ban to start at the beginning of the 2020–21 season.

[114] On 12 January 2021, Pope broke his arm after landing awkwardly following a clash of heads in an EFL Trophy tie with Sunderland and played on for the remaining 19 minutes until the full-time whistle as caretaker manager Danny Pugh had already used his allocation of substitutions.

[117] He got off to an excellent start to his "Bears" career, being named as Premier Division Player of the Month for August after scoring six goals, providing two assists and winning five man of the match awards in six games.

[123] He scored nine goals in 27 games in the 2023–24 season, featuring in the Mid Cheshire District FA Senior Cup final victory over Northwich Victoria.

[125] On 20 May 2024, Pope returned to Hanley Town, the club where he began his senior playing career, to work as a player and head of Youth Development.

[136] In November 2019, January 2020 and July 2020 he was suspended for ten matches and fined a total of £7,600 by The Football Association for "bringing the game into disrepute" in regards to unspecified posts he made on social media, with one Tweet being judged to have been antisemitic.

[143] Pope and teammate Adam Yates began the 2011–12 season as joint-managers of local amateur Sunday League side Sneyd,[144] fitting their management duties around their professional careers at Vale Park.